Here are the Town Hall’s numbers, copied and pasted from an earlier e-mail (updated now we know about the balcony):

Main Hall: 500 + 242 on balcony

Assembly Room: 200

Old Library: 120

Council Chamber: 105

Long Room: 70

Court Room: 43

St. Aldates Room: 40

Plowman Room: 30

Panel Room: 30

And then 3 other smaller rooms, and 1 not suitable for presentations.

This comes close to your req of (1x200, 2x150, 3x80) particularly if we use the Main Hall for talks other than just the opening closing ones. It would be fairly easy to get more medium sized rooms in other buildings (e.g. college/department lecture theatres) were we to decide that was necessary.

The alternative if we don’t like either this or the split room main talk suggestion is to book either just the main hall of the Town Hall and Exam Schools, or the Sheldonian and Exam Schools. The latter option would enable us to accommodate a truly gigantic conference with rooms of sizes 1000, 2x450, 250, + 14 rooms of sizes 10 to 120.

As for catering and social spaces: I imagine dinners at least would be provided in whatever college we’re booking up and perhaps lunches too. The college would also provide social spaces for the evening. During the day we could have drinks stands in the foyer of the Town Hall/Exam Schools or a marquee up in Exam Schools quad. Remember though that we are bang in a city centre, so people could leave the building for 2 mins and come back with a drink and a baguette from a shop.

Tom

From: wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Cormac Lawler
Sent: 29 July 2008 15:50
To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Wikimania Oxford 2010 Tasks + What is it OK to offer the OII in return at this stage

On 7/28/08, Tom Holden <thomas.holden@gmail.com> wrote:

Well there certainly are larger venues than the town hall in Oxford. (Though the town hall may be able to accommodate more than 500. Their website suggests both 500 and around 750. I've sent off a clarification e-mail about this.) The Sheldonian can seat up to 1000 and the Playhouse can seat 613.

Using both of the two 450 seating rooms at Exam schools is another possibility perhaps. We could have cameras and projectors in both rooms, and take it in turns between having a live video feed from the 1^st to the 2^nd, and a live feed from the 2^nd to the 1^st. (This would obviously only work if there were going to be multiple speakers in the talk.)

Breaking up a single session between different spaces would make for a pretty impoverished experience, in my opinion. (If I understand you correctly.)

Just to be clear on what we need - we need a large theatre/room that holds *all* delegates (say, 700) for openings/keynotes/closings; then we need a range of medium-sized rooms that hold groups of people (eg. 1x200, 2x150, 3x80) for presentations; then we need a communal space (or several spaces) where people can mingle, chat, display posters, have coffee, etc. In addition, we will probably need somewhere to eat communally - this wasn't provided for in Alexandria, but it has been one of the criticisms of the conference raised in its wake.

Cormac